Going with the Flow
This article originally appeared in Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, on May 5, 2005.
reviewed by Colin Eatock
Ann Southam, a composer in her mid 60s, has been quietly writing music in Toronto for decades now, without drawing too much attention to herself. But she made a big splash on Tuesday night at Toronto’s Music Gallery, thanks to pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, who dove into the first complete performance of Southam’s Rivers with rare intensity and commitment.
Composed between 1979 and 1981 – originally written as three separate suites, comprising 17 movements in total – Rivers is two hours long and was the only work on the program. For this recital, the movements of the three suites were intermingled to create one massive work, challenging to the performer and perhaps a little daunting to the listener. Lengthy piano works have a way of dying on their feet, and even an acknowledged masterpiece such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations can be crushingly dull in the wrong hands.
But Rivers was in the right hands. Petrowska Quilico knows this music – all million-or-so notes of it – backwards and forwards: she’s recorded the whole thing for a set of CDs co-produced by the CBC and the Canadian Music Centre, recently released on the Centrediscs label. More importantly, she knows how to draw forth all of the colour and expression that Southam has put in her score.
Like much of Southam’s music, Rivers falls under the broad rubric of minimalism. Southam has acknowledged her debt to brand-name minimalist Philip Glass (through a series of compositions entitled Glass Houses), but her music is clearly distinguishable from his. While she makes use of the repetitive patterns that are a defining feature of minimalism, her compositions rise above the style’s clichés, eschewing the monotonous, the mechanical and the obsessive.
Rivers is rich, varied and full of invention, and there are many highlights. The fifth movement of Suite No. 3 is a delightful swirl of notes. By contrast, the second movement of Suite No. 2 offers exotic, otherworldly harmonies, set against ponderous and solemn chords in the bass. And the ninth movement of Suite No. 3 (played as the finale of the program) is a dramatic and brilliant tour de force. Each movement has a distinctive character and compositional approach: surprisingly, many are based on a Southam’s own version of Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone system – without any of the dryness often associated with that technique.
Of course, in a 17-movement work, not all movements can be the best. A few of the pieces ended rather abruptly, and several others were over-extended, pressing onward after their energy had dissipated. I could name the movements I’m referring to – but I won’t, because Rivers has a mystical way of absorbing its own flaws into a unified Greater Scheme of Things.
Despite the apparently piece-meal fashion in which Rivers was composed, and the mix-and-match order in which the movements were presented, there was a powerfully cumulative effect to this performance. Both the composition and Petrowska Quilico’s playing seemed to gain in strength as the recital unfolded – much like tributaries joining together to form a vast estuary, flowing together into the sea. This is astonishing music.
© Colin Eatock 2005
reviewed by Colin Eatock
Ann Southam, a composer in her mid 60s, has been quietly writing music in Toronto for decades now, without drawing too much attention to herself. But she made a big splash on Tuesday night at Toronto’s Music Gallery, thanks to pianist Christina Petrowska Quilico, who dove into the first complete performance of Southam’s Rivers with rare intensity and commitment.
Composed between 1979 and 1981 – originally written as three separate suites, comprising 17 movements in total – Rivers is two hours long and was the only work on the program. For this recital, the movements of the three suites were intermingled to create one massive work, challenging to the performer and perhaps a little daunting to the listener. Lengthy piano works have a way of dying on their feet, and even an acknowledged masterpiece such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations can be crushingly dull in the wrong hands.
But Rivers was in the right hands. Petrowska Quilico knows this music – all million-or-so notes of it – backwards and forwards: she’s recorded the whole thing for a set of CDs co-produced by the CBC and the Canadian Music Centre, recently released on the Centrediscs label. More importantly, she knows how to draw forth all of the colour and expression that Southam has put in her score.
Like much of Southam’s music, Rivers falls under the broad rubric of minimalism. Southam has acknowledged her debt to brand-name minimalist Philip Glass (through a series of compositions entitled Glass Houses), but her music is clearly distinguishable from his. While she makes use of the repetitive patterns that are a defining feature of minimalism, her compositions rise above the style’s clichés, eschewing the monotonous, the mechanical and the obsessive.
Rivers is rich, varied and full of invention, and there are many highlights. The fifth movement of Suite No. 3 is a delightful swirl of notes. By contrast, the second movement of Suite No. 2 offers exotic, otherworldly harmonies, set against ponderous and solemn chords in the bass. And the ninth movement of Suite No. 3 (played as the finale of the program) is a dramatic and brilliant tour de force. Each movement has a distinctive character and compositional approach: surprisingly, many are based on a Southam’s own version of Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone system – without any of the dryness often associated with that technique.
Of course, in a 17-movement work, not all movements can be the best. A few of the pieces ended rather abruptly, and several others were over-extended, pressing onward after their energy had dissipated. I could name the movements I’m referring to – but I won’t, because Rivers has a mystical way of absorbing its own flaws into a unified Greater Scheme of Things.
Despite the apparently piece-meal fashion in which Rivers was composed, and the mix-and-match order in which the movements were presented, there was a powerfully cumulative effect to this performance. Both the composition and Petrowska Quilico’s playing seemed to gain in strength as the recital unfolded – much like tributaries joining together to form a vast estuary, flowing together into the sea. This is astonishing music.
© Colin Eatock 2005
